Salah Abdeslam spent three weeks in Slovakia

Paris attack suspect Salah Abdeslam spent three weeks in Slovakia last summer, according to a former Slovak Interior Ministry official, adding to reports that alleged terrorists had earlier acquired guns via the Central European country.

The Slovak news site Aktuality.sk first reported Abdeslam’s stay, citing two independent Interior Ministry sources. A former minister official confirmed the information for POLITICO. The exact timeline of his Slovak stay remains murky, but it appears to have been in the summer of 2015 when he was apparently in Nitra, a western Slovak city of 80,000 people, according to the former official.

Aktuality.sk reported that Abdeslam came to visit an Iraqi relative from the city of Mosul who is married to a Slovak, but Interior Minister Robert Kaliňak called that report “not entirely accurate.” The cryptic response prompted the political opposition to demand more details Thursday.

There is no indication Slovak officials had prior knowledge of Abdeslam’s presence on Slovak territory.

Following an April 6 cabinet meeting, Kaliňak told reporters that he would neither confirm nor deny the report that Abdeslam had been in Slovakia, but on November 24 and 25 of last year Slovak police conducted raids in Nitra and several other Slovak towns after receiving a tip from an unnamed Western intelligence agency.

The raids look to have been an attempt to locate Abdeslam days after twin assaults on Paris’ Stade de France and Bataclan theater killed 130 people on November 13, the ex-Interior Ministry official said.

“Someone supplied weapons, shelter, food, money,” Kaliňak said at the time. “They are scattered throughout the [EU].”

As of now there is no indication Slovak officials had prior knowledge of Abdeslam’s presence on Slovak territory.

“That is the crucial question,” said Marian Majer, director of the Slovak Security Policy Institute in Bratislava. “Otherwise this was a person was coming to Slovakia with a European passport. There was no reason to do anything, or baseline for any action. If they had been contacted in advance, then it is another story.”

Any tipoff from another intelligence agency would have likely gone directly to Slovakia’s main intelligence agency, the Slovak Information Service, which reports directly to Prime Minister Robert Fico. The SIS is largely focused on domestic matters and Slovakia’s immediate neighborhood, Majer said.

A criminal investigation remains open into allegations of aiding terrorism, but police have named no suspects.

“Already after the Charlie Hebdo attack, as well as the Paris attacks, Slovak police worked with partner organizations abroad and followed every trace that might help unravel the terrorist network,” an Interior Ministry spokesman said.

The November 2015 raids in Slovakia saw police detain a 42-year-old Tunisian man last year but quickly release him.

Just days after the November raids, the Wall Street Journal reported that weapons used in the January 2015 Charlie Hebdo shooting in Paris and in the August 2015 attempted attack on the Amsterdam-Paris Thalys high speed train were acquired in a gun shop in the Slovak city of Partizánske, which is about 50 kilometers northeast of Nitra.

At the time, a French police source said the attackers did not obtain those weapons, decommissioned AK-47s that were then reactivated, in Slovakia directly but via an intermediary in Belgium.

The November 2015 raids in Slovakia saw police detain a 42-year-old Tunisian man last year but quickly release him. The man, who has lived in Slovakia for 24 years, had reportedly been to both Belgium and France earlier in the year, but has repeatedly denied any ties to international jihadist networks or having met Abdeslam.

Abdeslam, a Belgian-born French national of Moroccan descent, is one of the key suspects in the November 2015 Paris attacks that killed 130. He was arrested by Belgian police in Brussels on March 18.